As we gather here in our national Parliament today, we have war in Europe, resulting in the largest forced-displacement of people since the Second World War, levels of inflation not seen in four decades and concerns that Europe could be facing an energy crisis. The outlook for the global economy is being downgraded, we have no government in Northern Ireland and we have witnessed political turmoil in London. The full impact of Brexit on our island remains unresolved and Covid-19 is on the rise again. Sinn Féin's ans…

-----and that are working well together. With the support of this House, which I hope is affirmed today, the Government will continue to be honest and do our best for the people of this country.

Will the Deputy join us and go into government? That will be the day.

I thank Deputy McDonald for raising the issue of back to school costs, which are a serious issue for thousands of families across Ireland at this time. We have said all along, and we are sticking to this position, that the budget will be on 27 September. This week we published the summer economic statement, which sets out what the underlying position is with the public finances. It means we can have a budget package in the autumn of €6.7 billion, €5.7 billion of which will be on the expenditure side, including inve…

There are income limits associated with this scheme. The Deputy quoted the lowest one. It depends on the number of children a person has. Certain incomes are excluded from consideration and are not reckonable, including housing assistance payment, working family payment, rent supports and so on. The Deputy is now advocating for the very families she believes should be paying 50% income tax rates. These are families earning €700 or €800 per week. In the last budget, the Government gave an individual earning €700 a w…

That is not going to fool anyone. The Government has adopted a coherent strategy.

This is an important intervention and we will do more in September when the budget comes.

I would make the case that providing a free hot meal to a child in a DEIS school is real change. This Government has expanded the DEIS programme by the single largest amount ever, to include more than 300 schools. It is the right thing to do. Deputies have all issued press releases with the details of what schools in their constituencies were given DEIS band 1 and band 2 status in recent months, because they know the value of it and the benefits afforded to schools by being given DEIS status. They are given DEIS st…

For any family looking at costs it feels it cannot meet and that currently is above the income eligibility criteria for the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance, it should reach out for help to the Department of Social Protection. There is an additional needs payment available there and the cost of returning the child back to school is a qualifying cost. As the Deputy is aware, we have made changes to the eligibility criteria for that additional needs payment. People who are working full time can now qual…

I thank Deputy Boyd Barrett. As a Government, we do fund the ESRI, which does outstanding work. It is important that we have bodies such as the ESRI providing an independent analysis of what the Government is doing about the challenges we face as a country, and we take the output from the ESRI very seriously. The report's key conclusion is that interventions, including increased supply, increased direct provision of social housing, and measures that develop alternative non-market rental cohorts, such as cost rental…

All of the Government’s interventions help people to buy a home. The Deputy has opposed and stood against all of the policy decisions and legislation that the Government has brought forward to support people to buy a home, whether it be the help to buy scheme, the setting up of the Land Development Agency, which had to be put on a statutory footing-----

It is now on a statutory footing and Government has approved Shanganagh, for example, which will provide almost 600 homes.

The Deputy has opposed all of the affordable housing initiatives, including the shared-equity first home scheme. He is great at the rhetoric. He comes in here and talks about helping people to buy a home.

Every time the Government makes an intervention to assist people to buy a home, the Deputy stands against it. That is the reality. This is the only way of addressing this massive challenge that we face as a country. We acknowledge that for many people, home ownership now seems to be out of reach. We have to address that and bridge that gap. We do that through a massive public capital investment programme led by the State. The State is now leading on the housing market. This Government will stand behind that and mak…

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. She highlighted a number of individual cases that underline a real crisis for those individuals and families. If she wants to provide the details of those individual cases to the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, I have no doubt that he will follow up. While the emergency accommodation system is undoubtedly under strain, emergency accommodation will be found for people who really need it. The real answer for us as a country is to build more public housing. That is what we a…

It will be addressed. We acknowledge the strain that is there in relation to the provision of emergency accommodation at this time. I attend all of the housing Cabinet committee meetings where we go into detail on all of the strands of this. The Government is working collectively, using every resource available to us to make sure that accommodation generally is made available to meet all of the needs that are there. If people need emergency accommodation, they will get the support they need. As I said, we are provi…

-----to get out of the market. Those are questions that need to be answered as well because we need an adequate supply of rental accommodation, which currently is falling. It falls to us in this House to make decisions that ensure that is a continued adequate supply of rental accommodation in the private sector. It is an important part of the overall system.

Perhaps if the Deputy adopted a more supportive and less obstructive position when it comes to the initiatives the Government is bringing forward to provide homes for our people, we might be in a better place.

Every single major initiative the Government has brought forward the Deputy has sought to block, frustrate and obstruct. You do not want people to be in a position to buy homes. It suits the Deputy politically for the housing crisis to continue.

It does and you will seek to make maximum political advantage out of it.